Www Presidency Ucsb Edu

UCSB Presidency Project Election Statistics Access Skill

Overview

This skill extracts structured US presidential election data from The American Presidency Project at presidency.ucsb.edu.

Data Extracted

Candidate Information

• Presidential and vice presidential candidates for each major party
• Political party affiliation
• Electoral votes received
• Electoral vote percentage
• Popular votes received
• Popular vote percentage
• Winner indicator

State-by-State Results

For each state (including District of Columbia):

• Total votes cast
• Votes for each party's candidate
• Vote percentage for each candidate
• Electoral votes won (shown for the winning candidate)

Functions

get_election

Get complete election data for a specific year.

Parameters:

• year (integer, required): Presidential election year (e.g., 2000, 2004, 2008)

Example:

result = await execute({
    "function": "get_election",
    "year": 2000
})

Sample Response:

{
  "year": 2000,
  "candidates": [
    {
      "party": "Republican",
      "presidential_candidate": "George W. Bush",
      "vice_presidential_candidate": "Richard Cheney",
      "electoral_votes": 271,
      "electoral_vote_percentage": "50.4%",
      "popular_votes": "50,455,156",
      "popular_vote_percentage": "47.9%",
      "winner": true
    },
    {
      "party": "Democratic",
      "presidential_candidate": "Albert Gore, Jr.",
      "vice_presidential_candidate": "Joseph Lieberman",
      "electoral_votes": 266,
      "electoral_vote_percentage": "49.4%",
      "popular_votes": "50,992,335",
      "popular_vote_percentage": "48.4%",
      "winner": false
    }
  ],
  "state_results": [
    {
      "state": "Florida",
      "total_votes": "5,963,110",
      "republican_votes": "2,912,790",
      "republican_percentage": "48.8",
      "republican_electoral_votes": "25",
      "democratic_votes": "2,912,253",
      "democratic_percentage": "48.8"
    }
  ],
  "total_states": 51,
  "parties": ["Republican", "Democratic"]
}

get_state_results

Get election results for a specific state in a given year.

Parameters:

• year (integer, required): Presidential election year
• state (string, required): State name (case-insensitive)

Example:

result = await execute({
    "function": "get_state_results",
    "year": 2008,
    "state": "California"
})

list_elections

List information about available election years.

Example:

result = await execute({
    "function": "list_elections"
})

Technical Details

Implementation

• Uses direct HTTP requests with httpx for efficient data retrieval
• Parses HTML using BeautifulSoup for structured extraction
• No browser automation required

Data Validation

• Validates election year is a valid presidential election year (every 4 years from 1789)
• Returns structured error messages for invalid years or missing data
• Handles both standard and edge case page formats

Notable Elections

• 2000: Bush vs. Gore, includes Green party (Nader), famously close Florida results
• 2004: Bush vs. Kerry
• 2008: Obama vs. McCain, Democrats listed first (won election)

Error Handling

Returns structured error objects for:

• Missing required parameters
• Invalid election years
• HTTP errors or timeouts
• Missing or malformed data

Example Error:

{
  "error": "State 'Flordia' not found in 2000 election results",
  "year": 2000,
  "available_states": ["Alabama", "Alaska", "Arizona", "..."],
  "total_available": 51
}

Source

Data sourced from The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara. URL: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/elections/{year}